ACROSS THE NATION.

`Preppie' killer ends prison stay

February 16, 2003|By Items compiled from Tribune news services.

NEW YORK — Robert E. Chambers Jr., whose "preppie murder" case brought him national attention, walked out of the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, N.Y, on Friday morning after serving a full 15-year maximum sentence for killing an 18-year-old woman in Central Park in 1986.

Wearing a red sweater and green pants, a Nike bag slung over his shoulder, Chambers, 36, stepped through the front door of the prison alone and passed a throng of reporters about 7:25 a.m. without comment.

He climbed into a blue corrections van that drove him to a bus station in Syracuse. There, he was picked up by an unidentified driver.

Chambers was convicted of killing Jennifer Dawn Levin after what he described as a session of rough sex. He maintained that her death was accidental.